


Jamais Vu

by conceptofzero



Category: Monster Pulse (Webcomic)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-04
Updated: 2016-06-04
Packaged: 2018-07-12 02:57:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,716
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7082386
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/conceptofzero/pseuds/conceptofzero
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rob’s always had trouble counting steps. Doesn’t matter the direction, going up or going down (but especially on the way down), he tends to always miss one. There’s nothing so familiar and so horrible as the lurch in his guts when he steps down and the ground isn’t there to catch him, or the stumble when he steps straight and his foot catches on that last step. He’s gotten pretty good at laughing it off and not taking it personally when people look the other direction and pretend they didn’t see anything. They’re not being rude, they’re just being people. </p><p>He wakes up one morning feeling like that and spends the new few weeks waiting to land.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Jamais Vu

Rob’s always had trouble counting steps. Doesn’t matter the direction, going up or going down (but especially on the way down), he tends to always miss one. There’s nothing so familiar and so horrible as the lurch in his guts when he steps down and the ground isn’t there to catch him, or the stumble when he steps straight and his foot catches on that last step. He’s gotten pretty good at laughing it off and not taking it personally when people look the other direction and pretend they didn’t see anything. They’re not being rude, they’re just being people. 

He wakes up one morning feeling like that and spends the new few weeks waiting to land.

It’s maddening but not enough to make him desperate enough to go to a doctor to talk about it. The feeling doesn't affect his ability to do his job or live his life normally. It’s just… always there. No matter what he does or where he goes, he feels like there’s something missing from the world. 

It’s kind of like he forgot something, but it’s more than that. It’s stronger. He pats himself down each time he leaves the house (house keys, car keys, wallet, phone) and everything’s always there, but he shuts the door and feels like there’s something he’s forgotten. It’s like he’s looking at a numbered list and he’s checked them all off, but there’s a number missing somewhere and he just can’t find it. 

All of the lists he has are complete. Just to be sure, he hides the old lists and rewrites them, comparing the two to each, in the hopes that maybe something missing will unknowingly slip through. Rob misses a few things on the grocery list and doesn’t copy over a mechanic’s appointment he’s got next week, but there’s nothing on the new lists missing from the old ones. Whatever it is he’s forgotten, it’s not there. 

The problem isn’t just that he’s forgotten something. Rob forgets plenty of things. If his memory was going, he could go to the clinic and tell the nurses that. They’d know what to do. He’s the right age for these kinds of problems to start cropping up. But if he went there, what would he even say? That he knows he forgot something, but he’s remembering everything else? 

How would he possibly explain that it’s more than just a memory problem? The problem is that he always feels as if he’s opened the wrong door and stepped into someone else’s house. Except he knows this is his house because it’s full of all his possessions. He’s got photos on the walls of him and Marla and his mother’s good crockery shoved in a china cabinet in the corner of his living room, and the list of numbers posted by the phone is in his handwriting. Nobody would go to all the trouble of duplicating even the scuff marks in the kitchen that he’s never been able to clean off the tile, or that water stain in the bathroom that he covered up with a wall scroll that’s starting to curl from the humidity. People wouldn’t think to do that. 

This is home, but it doesn’t feel like his home. It feels like there’s something that’s not there. He finds himself tracing his hand along the hallway when he gets up in the morning, his hand seeking a door that isn’t there. It’s never there, but his hand travels along the way anyway, tracing a track that isn’t there and wasn’t ever there. No matter how many times he walks along the hall, there’s never any change in things. The doors go in order (his bedroom, spare room, bathroom, and on the other side of the hall, the study, the other spare room) and they never change no matter how many times he opens them. 

On the spare room, he looks at the door and feels like there should be something on it. But there’s nothing inside but old boxes and a guest bed that hasn’t been used in years. He should change one of the spare rooms into something other than storage. But he thinks of that and his gut clenches and he feels ice spread along his insides like poison. He can’t. He doesn’t know why but he can’t. 

Rob counts the stairs under his breath as he goes down them. No matter how many times he counts, or how many times it matches up, he finds his foot kicking out early, looking for the last step a second too soon. He stumbles and it feels like a relief at first, right until he takes the next step and realizes he’s still walking on air, waiting for the other shoe to drop next. 

At first he writes down the things he notices are wrong. Then he tears up his list and throws it away, not wanting to see the ways in which it keeps growing. The longer it goes on, the more he wonders what’s wrong with him. He wasn’t always like this.

The last time he teared up was at Marla’s funeral, so many years ago now that he remembers the photographs of her face better than his own memories. He got used to it, to living alone and to having no one but himself. Rob was happy, even if he was alone. 

Now, whenever he looks at his reflection, he feels a little like crying and he doesn’t know why. The worst is when he catches a glimpse of himself in a store window, or reflected in someone’s glasses. There’s something about that first initial glance that brings him to a stop. Somehow, in the moment before his brain realizes it’s himself he’s looking at, he thinks he’s seeing someone else… but he doesn’t know who. 

He thinks maybe Marla, but. It’s not Marla either. He misses her still so much after all this time, but he’s got photos of her in the house and while they make him sad, it’s not the same. He knows who he’s looking at when he sees her. But the reflection… 

There’s always a moment when he feels relief, and then there’s nothing, and he’s left in that moment, forever reaching for a step that isn’t there. How is he supposed to explain that to a doctor? What should he even start? He doesn’t know. 

And maybe it’s unfair, but he doesn’t want to know either. Rob knows it isn’t healthy to live like this, but he tries to imagine himself going back to normal - to a life where his face reminds him of nobody but himself, and where he goes to work without worrying he’s left something behind, and where he feels satisfied with his live alone in this too-big house with empty rooms he’s never gotten around to filling - and all he can feel is a deep sense of unease that quickly turns to outright terror. 

So he tries his hand at abnormal. He buys a cookbook and makes new meals every night. Rob takes the long way to work. He wakes up at different times, and he goes out to see movies alone. And when he runs across Greathouse again, he asks her if the invitation to dinner is still open. (Why did he say no? He can’t remember. Maybe Marla? Maybe.) He tries to find something else to occupy his time until the abnormal becomes normal, and the feeling of having forgotten something essential fades away. 

It doesn’t though. No matter what he does, it’s always there. It’s louder sometimes than others, but he’s always missing the last step. 

It’s weeks later when there’s a knock at the door. Rob answers it, and there’s a young girl there. Her face is drawn into a blank expression, and he knows her. He knows her. “It’s you! You’re here!” he blurts without a second of hesitation.

The girl holds herself so carefully and so familiarly. He’s never met her before, but he knows her. All of his memories tell him that this has never happened before but he knows that’s wrong. He knows her. She looks up at him, those narrowed eyes of her blinking wide with surprise. “You remember…”

"I missed you- or at least- I missed something, and I had no idea what it was-” He had lists and he had counted doors and he’d looked in his cupboards to try remember why he had half the things he’d bought and he knows now that they were for her - the room upstairs with the too-small guest bed, the noodles in the kitchen that he couldn’t stand but she loved, the children’s books in the study he knew word by word even though he couldn’t remember reading them. Those were her things. He knows this, even if he can’t remember any of it, even if he can’t remember her. “But now that I see you, I- Who are you?”

Her face is so familiar. It’s the reflection he’s been looking for, the missing one that kept disappointing his eyes whenever he looked into reflective surfaces. Rob knows her as well as he knows himself. Maybe even better, because she’s still got her eyes wide but he knows she’ll answer him. She always answers him. “… I am your daughter.”

There’s tears in his eyes as he draws her into his arms. She presses against his chest in a familiar way and he knows in an instant that he’s hugged her like this a thousand times. Her name is beyond him, and there’s no memories of her, but his body remembers. He hugs her tight and feels the swelling deep in her chest, threatening to overwhelm him. His girl, his daughter, his child… He forgot her. How could he have forgotten her? He shoves his thoughts aside, he holds her close and refuses to let go. “Oh, of course you are, of course you are!”

For the first time in weeks, he steps forward. Both feet hit solid ground and he doesn’t stumble. He stays upright and he holds his daughter close. He’s got no memory of her and a thousand questions, but he knows he can stand that. As long as he’s got her around, he won’t be missing that final step any longer.


End file.
